Algorithm has the word on US election

A University of Queensland computer scientist who harvests social media to accurately predict election results says he can confidently call United States election.

“Hillary is still in front, but it’s become much tighter,” said Professor Xue Li.

Professor Li (pictured) predicted the 2013 Australian federal election and the 2015 Queensland election with 95 per cent accuracy.

He is a big data expert in the UQ School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, and his US election prediction is based on an online search and analysis tool that is updated daily with the previous 24 hours’ social media data.

The online tool is analysing the US election live.

“There are a lot of very angry Americans,” Professor Li said.

“That anger has increased since the news on the FBI re-examining Hillary’s emails.

“Trump is doing better in the south, but unless there is some big negative news about Hillary over the weekend, or a dramatic change in the Trump campaign, our prediction for a Hillary win will hold.”

Professor Li said his data looked at trends and changes “based on sentiment analysis on unique language models that both candidates are using”.

“We provide nationwide and state-wide predictions and show how the forecast has changed,” he said.

“We also do a rates comparison on issues, with the information accumulated using sentiment analysis and ‘deep learning’ algorithms.

Professor Li’s big data expertise led to his inclusion in the Australian Financial Review’s Power Issue 2015, under the heading Australian computer scientist makes an algorithm that predicts elections.

“The US election is more location-sensitive than the Australian election, as each US state has an independent popular vote for the final electoral vote,” Professor Li said.

“The electoral vote system means US citizens do not directly elect the government – instead they choose electors, who usually pledge to vote for particular candidates.

“So we look at Twitter users who we can identify as being located in a particular US state to calculate a popular vote for each state.”